One Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Scene Made Christina Chong & Paul Wesley Want To Puke
Sometime in the early 2000s, maybe around the time of "Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones," major Hollywood studios began experimenting in earnest with new ways to make effects-based blockbusters. This was the era of green-screen environments, wherein actors would be filmed in the middle of a large green room with only minimal sets surrounding them. The background of the scene — both interiors and exteriors — would then be filled in digitally in post-production. It was a handy way to visually realize large fantastical spaces without having to build a set.
20 years on, "virtual environment" technology has finally evolved into something a little more streamlined and less time-consuming, in the form of Augmented Reality walls. AR walls are, in brief, giant TV screens that broadcast moving virtual backgrounds during the actual shooting of a scene. Actors stand next to the circular AR wall, while the wall's images are wired into the show's cameras, allowing the background to shift appropriately based on the camera's movements. It's a way to avoid building sets without having to composite in backgrounds after the fact. /Film has written about AR walls several times in the past, and it is famously used on sci-fi shows like "The Mandalorian," "Star Trek: Discovery," and "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds."
It's been said that AR walls are a little disorienting for the actors. Because the backgrounds are moving based on the camera's movements and not on the actors' movements, an actor standing close to the screen will often see the background lurch and sway unexpectedly, leading to vertigo and disorientation. This was certainly the case with Christina Chong, who plays La'an Noonien Singh on "Strange New Worlds." In a recent interview with Awards Radar, Chong related the sea-sickness-inducing experience.
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow
A recent episode of "Strange New Worlds," called "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" saw Christina Chong and her co-star Paul Wesley transported to 2023 Toronto. Many of their scenes took place in Canada, but several of them were filmed against an AR wall back in the studio. Notably, a scene that took place in a car had to be filmed in a stationary car while the background swirled past them on the screens outside. This sequence, Chong said, was enough to make her and Wesley nauseated:
"[T]he most non-fun scene to shoot. That was the car scene, the interior of the car. Because it was shot on the VR wall, a virtual reality wall. They shot the plates of Toronto, the outside of Toronto, projected it onto the virtual reality wall and then we brought the car into the studio. We were in the car and watching the screen move, but the car was stationary. You can imagine that creates motion sickness, and both Paul and I are massive motion sickness people. We were like, 'Guys, we can't do this. We can't do it. We can't look at the wall.'"
This may be a similar effect experienced by actors in the 1930s who had to act in front of a rear-screen projection for the first time. Rear-screen projection, of course, was the practice of running an actual film reel against a screen that was on set with the actors, making it look like they were driving a car. One can imagine some actors standing up close to a speeding movie screen and feeling a little dizzy by the speeding movement. The modern AR wall seems to be the juiced-up, high-tech version of the same thing. Chong and Wesley felt a little ill.
Barf bags
Christina Chong admitted that she and Paul Wesley had to spend a lot of time looking at the floor and even had barf bags at the ready, along with Dramamine (just in case the sea-sickness got the better of them). Staying in character was tough, however, even for a single take. Chong said:
"We literally were getting [...] out of the car onto the floor, heads in hands like, 'Oh my god, we're gonna throw up.' We have plastic bags down by our feet and we had the seasickness tablets coming in. There was one scene, one take of it, where the camera must have been behind us. Yeah, looking at the wall, but it was behind us. We were doing the scene and we have to look forwards otherwise the cameras gonna see that."
For both Chong and Wesley, it was less a matter of acting the scene as it was reading through the lines as quickly as possible and getting away from the AR wall as quickly as possible. Luckily, both Chong and Wesley were feeling the AR wall's full effects, so one didn't have to support the other. They were merely suffering together:
"I'm looking up and trying not to feel sick and doing my lines. I say my line and then I look over to Paul and he's got his eyes closed with his head down. Oh my god, it was the most funny moment. Literally, we were just trying to survive shooting that scene. It was just the worst thing ever if you have motion sickness. So that's a little story of the most non-fun to shoot."
Luckily, the scene came out well, and the episode as a whole is perfectly enjoyable. AR walls, however, will take some more getting used to.